Ahmad ibn Fadlan

Ahmad ibn al-'Abbās ibn Rashīd ibn Hammad ibn Fadlan (أحمد ابن العباس ابن رشيد ابن حماد ابن فضلان) was a 10th century Muslim writer and traveler who wrote an account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Caliph of Baghdad to the king of the Volga Bulgars, the Kitāb ilā Malik aṣ-Ṣaqāliba كتاب إلى ملك الصقالبة.

Manuscript Tradition

For a long time, only an incomplete version of the account was known, as transmitted in the geographical dictionary of Yāqūt (under the headings Atil, Bashgird, Bulghār, Khazar, Khwārizm, Rūs), published in 1823 by Fraehn. Only in 1923 was a manuscript discovered by the Turkish scholar Zeki Validi Togan in the library of the Iranian city of Mashhad. The manuscript MS 5229 dates from the 13th century (7th cent. Hijra) and consists of 420 pages (210 folia). Besides other geographical treatises, it contains a fuller version of Ibn Fadlan's text (pp. 390-420). Additional passages not preserved in MS 5229 are quoted in the work of the 16th century Persian geographer Amin Razi called Haft Iqlīm "Seven Climes".

The Embassy

Ibn Fadlan was sent from Baghdad in 921 to serve as the secretary to an ambassador from the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir to the iltäbär (vassal-king under the Khazars) of the Volga Bulgaria, Almış.

The embassy's objective was to have the king of the Bolğars pay homage to Caliph al-Muqtadir and, in return, to give the king money to pay for the construction of a fortress. Although they reached Bolğar, the mission failed because they were unable to collect the money intended for the king. Annoyed at not receiving the promised sum, the king refused to switch from the Maliki rite to the Hanafi rite of Baghdad.

The embassy left Baghdad on June 21 921 (11 Safar 309). It reached the Bulghars after much hardship on May 12 922 (12 Muharram 310) (This day is an official religious holiday in modern Tatarstan). The journey took Ibn Fadlan from Baghdad to Bukhara, to Khwarizm (south of the Aral Sea), to Jurjaniya (where his party spent the winter), north across the Ural River until they reached the camp of the Bulghars at the three lakes of the Volga north of the Samara bend.

After arriving in Bolğar, Ahmad ibn Fadlan made a trip to Wisu and recorded his observations of trade between the Volga Bolğars and local Finnic tribes.

The Rus

A substantial part of Ibn Fadlan's account is dedicated to the description of a people he called the Rūs روس or Rūsiyyah. Most scholars identify them with the Rus' or Varangians, which would make Ibn Fadlan's account one of the earliest portrayals of Vikings. However, the anti-Normanist scholar Pavel Dolukhanov claims that the description presents the mixture of Scandinavian and Khazarian traits, indicating either Ibn Fadlan's confusion of the two peoples or fluid intermixture of them occurring at the described time.

The Rūs appear as traders that set up shop on the river banks nearby the Bolğar camp. They are described as having the most perfect bodies, tall as palm-trees, with blond hair and ruddy skin. They are tattooed from "fingernails to neck" with dark blue "tree patterns" and other "figures" and that all men are armed with an axe and a long knife.

Ibn Fadlan describes the hygiene of the Rūsiyyah as disgusting (while also noting with some astonishment that they comb their hair every day) and considers them vulgar and unsophisticated. In that, his impressions contradict those of the Persian traveler Ibn Rustah. He also describes in great detail the funeral of one of their chieftains (a ship burial involving human sacrifice).

Fiction

Elements of Ibn Fadlan's account are used in the novel Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton (filmed as The 13th Warrior with Antonio Banderas as Ibn Fadlan), in which the Arab ambassador is taken even further north and is involved in adventures inspired by the Old English epic Beowulf.

References

Ch. M. Fraehn. Die ältesten arabischen Nachrichten über die Wolga-Bulgaren aus Ibn-Foszlan's Reiseberichte. – «Memoires de L'Academie Imper. des Sciences.», VI serie, 1823.
Ibn Fadlan, Voyage chez les Bulgares de la Volga, trad. Marius Canard, Paris 1988.
Collection of Geographical Works by Ibn al-Faqih, Ibn Fadlan, Abu Dulaf Al-Khazraji, ed. Fuat Sezgin, Frankfurt am Main, 1987.

External links

Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 3 (2000), containing "Ibn Fadlan and the Rūsiyyah", by James E. Montgomery, with an annotated translation of the part of the account pertaining to the Rus.
Risala: Ibn Fadlan's Embassy to the King of Volga Bulgaria
Encyclopedia of Ukraine
Ibn-Fadlan: Ibn.fadlan.com